This is spot on. NUS national conference (I've been three times folks) is a true sign of how utterly dreadful NUS is. It is dominated by issues of marginal importance to the "average" student, is overwhelmingly self-obsessed (much of the time is spent procedurally bickering between factions) and largely impotent.

Regional conferences again show the incompetence of the NEC (National Executive Committee), when time and time again (I?ve been to five of these things) the regional observers (people elected by regional conference to check on the NEC) would report back in an exasperated state and the ridiculousness of NEC meetings and the way money was wasted.

NUS does not provide a platform for Imperial?s voice for two very key reasons ? its voice would likely be very different from Imperial?s, and more critically, it is terrible at having a voice at the best of times. I am not even about to expand on the dismal state of NUS finances.

A much, much better way of obtaining representation on national issues is to get involved directly (going to Parliament etc) and, although this often isn?t done around student unions, working together with other likeminded student unions ? they?re not hard to find.

You mention 'Student Discounts' as a benefit, but when the card costs you £10, and most places (like Amazon) only give you a 5% discount, you would have to spend £200 to recoup the benefits if you went in on an economical argument. Not to mention the £50,000 or so joining fees our union will have to sift through.

OK - let's bring in the other side of the argument to add some balance to this debate:

"working together with other likeminded student unions"

Like Sunderland and Northampton? With the exception of Southampton, all of the other top universities in England and Wales are NUS affiliates.

"going to Parliament"

We tried that once for the notorious 2003 top up fees vote. Our President got to meet his anonymous local back bench Tory MP. The NUS officers involved were speaking to Cabinet level MPs and leading rebels from across the UK's political and geographical spectrum.

"and most places (like Amazon) only give you a 5% discount"

I have seen it as high as 20% in places.

"Not to mention the £50,000 or so joining fees our union will have to sift through."

£50,000 (by the way it's actually £35,000 for the first year and £44,000 for the second) is considerably less than the £79,000 we give to ULU each year and represents less than 1% of ICU's turnover. Many of ICU's clubs and societies spend more than 1% of their annual budget on affiliation fees to their national bodies.

"Like Sunderland and Northampton? With the exception of Southampton, all of the other top universities in England and Wales are NUS affiliates."

Sorry, does NUS affiliation mean that other student unions cease suddenly to exist as independent entities that we can work with? Indeed, many of the UL Unions are NUS affiliated, and I believe one of the "stronger" arguments for NUS affiliation is that having relied on ULU previously we need the NUS.

It's still possible to work with the NUS and likeminded unions in the NUS without affiliating.

"Our President got to meet his anonymous local back bench Tory MP."

We also got to attend the meeting of rebel MP's and students in a committee room. It is true our president missed out on one on one meetings with cabinet level MPs.

However, it is rather disingenuous to claim this has a significant impact, as these are the ones least likely to shirk the whip. Indeed in the final vote, the motion was carried by the defection of a few of the rebels. It was precisely why we decided to try and target rebels.

Now if the NUS had done more to ensure that more students registered to vote in the rebels constituency had turned up and lobbied them directly, making it clear they stood to lose votes in future elections, that would have been far more effective than going to ego stroking one on one meetings with the people that were proposing the motion in the first place. But that isn't really the NUS's style: the officers like to talk to power, and the rank and file members are to stand outside waving placards.

And then there is the fact we had other unions using our material, and IIRC some of the pamphlets on other options did get circulated at some point amoung senior politicians who mistook it for NUS stuff.

You keep harking back to the top-up fees debate of 2003/2004. ICU was able to garner some attention then purely as a result of College's behaviour. It was a paper to our College Council which was leaked to the media. It was our Rector who first came out publicly in favour of top-up fees. It was our College which led the national debate. Without College pursuing their agenda so vigorously ICU would have been relegated to the sidelines yet again - and we can't always rely on College being so utterly rubbish (which they were if you oppose top-up fees) to provide us with publicity.

For 99% of the time we, as a Union, simply don't get a look in, and that's why we need the NUS.

At the minute the NUS is pretty useless at opposing top up fees. Is Ben suggesting that if ICU pay them an extra £50 000 a year and add an extra 12,000 students to the 5 million they already have (representing 0.24% of their membership) then suddenly they will be brilliant and the government will take them seriously?

Largely because it keeps being brought back as the perfect examplar of why we need to join the NUS. Indeed someone at some point went as far as to suggest that the choice was between joining the NUS or being the college that support fees.

It's a totaly false argument, and indeed being involved heavily with the fees campaign, it was the classic example of what is wrong with the NUS. The motion fell by three votes, and asside from some NUS execs, and a few ULU and ICU people, there was no one inside parliament. If the NUS had got it's act together and stopped thinking in terms of "important people" in high powered one-on-one meetings and the rabble outside with placards, they could surely have had ten student constituents of each rebel lobbying their MP in Parliament on the day. I think that would have been far more effective.

As Iain Gibbson pointed out in the meeting that our then President now mysteriously is claimed not to have attended, the important thing at that point was to prevent rebels from switching back.

Yet it's considered a terribly relevant point that the NUS President was talking to the Education secretary while ours was talking to rebels.

Indeed, the real nonsense here is that if we joined the NUS, it would STILL be the NUS President ineffectively trying to get consessions out of the Education minister who's bill is being presented, seeking consessions in line with the same NUS policies, and ICU's president would still be outside talking to rebels.

It's not a national voice we are getting here: If you join a choir you don't get to decide what you are singing.

If you think the NUS is ever going to pass policy supporting differential funding via HEFCE for lab based courses you are on a hiding to nothing.

Do we seriously believe that it is in IC's best interest to campaign for 50% participation in higher education without any means to fund it?

"It was a paper to our College Council which was leaked to the media."

Yes. By people in ICU. Followed up rapidly with a media grabbing protest. Once outed the Rector threw caution to the wind, and it scared other universities.

Personally I think all this politics is dull. Most students just want to get cheaper cinema tickets and clothes. More and more places are saying NUS only now as evidence of proof of student. £44,000 / 12,000 students is £3.67 per student, less in the first year. (this would be made up by 2 visits to my local cinema which only accepts NUS) Why not just add it to the tuition fees? ;) and then cooperate with other university unions to challenge how NUS represents students.

Which cinema would that be Chris? I've successfully used my IC card in Fulham, Shepherd's Bush and Park Royal (Vue), Leicester Square, Uxbridge and High Street Kensington (Odeon), Kings Road (Cineworld), Yeovil (not sure..), Manchester (Odeon?). The only place it hasn't been accepted was the UGC in Hammersmith, but that's a bit of a dive anyway.

It would actually be £4.30 per student (affiliation is £52k), but then you only get the benefit if you pay another £10 for the card. Estimates have put the likely takeup of cards here at 1,000-2,000. So if people want discounts we should charge £40 per person for the NUS Extra card and use that to pay for affiliation.

Of course if you really want cheap cinema tickets - and to bring beer into the cinema - you should visit ICU Cinema during term time, normally on Tuesday and Thursday (http://www.union.ic.ac.uk/arts/cinema/).

It was a UGC cinema also. But its not just cinemas, its nightclubs and shops. I had problems with HMV a few years ago also, but they changed their systen thankfully. Chavs in Swindon haven't heard of Imperial College, most havent heard of university. I have had no problems either using IC card in London but in the sticks it is more of a problem. I just think its a bit pants that Scunthorpe polytechnic with an annual budget of 37p signs up, yet IC, about the richest uni in the world has issues with it...

Well, it seems that Cineworld was previously UGC. I understand the 'No' campaign has a good relationship with the Cineworld PR people so could get them to phone the branch in Swindon.

The issue here has always been one of return on investment. When you can negotiate discounts by yourself, then membership gets you a small number of discounts and representation. The politics people don't care about at Imperial becomes the driving force for joining, so we haven't bothered. £52k is the entire budget of the RCC (which manages Gliding club, Caving, various other outdoor adventure sports etc) and people would much rather have more money go to something like that instead. You can often just boycott places that are being rubbish, or explain why you don't have an NUS card.

One of the reasons IC is rich is because we havn't blown our budgets affiliating to dodgy political organisations.

£44K is a lot of money. Generally, what most students consistently seem to care about at IC is not discounts, but clubs and societies activity. Part of the reason IC has such a strong clubs and society base is because we have a union which tends to focus on providing that rather than political campaigning.

In reply to John Collins' reply to a previous comment, he mentions that Southampton was the only other top-flight university to not feature membership with the NUS. Perhaps he'd missed University of Glasgow, University of St Andrews, University of Dundee and the Open University.

Dear readers, St Andrews is widely considered the top university in Scotland (although they don't offer Engineering as a course) and the Open University is the largest academic institution in the UK by student number.

So obviously, in one fellow swoop of mis-logic, if we weren't in the NUS we would automatically be shunned to only being in association with Northampton and Sunderland. Oh of course, because we're down in their league. Not.

Collins also mentions that our president Arif managed to only speak to 'his anonymous local back bench Tory MP'.

Well pehaps it hadn't occured to Collins that some Tory Shaddow Cabinet members at that time also were "anti-top-up fees" (see http://www.theyworkforyou.com ) and some of them even send their children to the college. Having been in the NUS would still have given us the same results. Speaking to one more backbencher is perhaps better than some NUS hack only speaking to one or two members of the cabinet (who also consist of former NUS presidents) who have already made up their minds to support Blair. I do not think that if Imperial were members of the NUS we would have been able to persuade these notorious cabinet ministers to vote otherwise.

To the comment:

"and most places (like Amazon) only give you a 5% discount"

Collins replies:

"I have seen it as high as 20% in places."

So have I. There is also this wonderful thing called 'Negotiation' (although I don't think they teach us that in Skempton) which is when you ask for things that aren't written in some leaflet you got given. You sometimes have to haggle with store managers, sometimes stores give their discounts to all students, regardless of NUS membership. I think Amazon was named because it is an Online retailer, often not up for personal negotiation, and because you specifically have to type in your NUS number.

Personally I have managed reasonable discounts at Topshop, Rymans, Cass Art stores, several other art stores (bearing in mind art colleges are often not in the NUS) Virgin and HMV.

And remember, the No campaign team have an email from Amazon indicating that the NUS agreement is only a trial and that they plan to roll out discounts to *all* students in the near future. Amazon state the current discount regime as "for 14 months".

John your a bag of contradictions. One minute the Yes campaign is banging on about how it represents "5 million students". Now you are saying (quite rightly) that the Scottish ones don't really count. Why on earth do the Scots still send delegates to conference then? It's either beacause the NUS needs their money or they just see the Scots as more people to join in the fun. After all, if you are going to play pretend politics the more people you can get involved the better.

John, the top up fees bill would have failed were it not for Labour's Scotish MP's votes!

Higher education matters affecting England are governed from the UK's national government (yes it's based in London but it contains representatives from Scotland who vote on the issue). There *IS* no English Government.

"The NUS were talking to the leading back bench rebels too (not just their own constituency MPs)."

So was the IC delegation. So what is the difference? The main difference is that the top up fees bill was lost at the last minute by five votes due to the defection of three back bench MP's, a defection that occured in negotiations the morning of the vote, while Telford was talking to the Education Minister (of all people!). At the very least they ought to have had at least ten constituents of the most wavering rebels green carding them.

A bus load of students from Newcastle telling Nick Brown what would happen if he defected back to the Government might have convinced him to abstain rather than vote for the Government. Anything Mandy Telford would say is merely an empty threat compared to Gordon Brown and the Whips Office.

Surely the NUS could have organised that?

At that particular point it was not a matter of negotiation for concessions in any way that could be affected by delegates from something like the NUS. The only way to stop an individual MP from voting against the whip if his conscience is not enough is to make it very clear to him or her they will face repercussions in their next election.

Conservatives and Lib Dems opposed the bill as a matter of policy (rather opportunistic of the Conservatives, but no matter). Only one Tory voted for the bill, and two abstained. One because he was Scotish, thereby highlighting the importance of working with those Scotish SU's.

Even if they had all voted, the bill would have passed by one vote due to the Labour defectors. The leading rebel was Ian Gibson, who is of course Labour.

Lets face the facts, the Fees issue was far from the NUS's finest hour. They failed to oppose the introduction of the £1000 fee, and their campaign platform for not increasing top-up fees was incoherent and reactionary rather than progressive. The campaign message was too easily portrayed as being selfish, I don't think they made spectacular use of their opportunities in the media, and to cap it all off they fluffed the vote when they ought to have been able to carry it off.

This magical super-duper discount card - the "NUS Card" - which entitles the holder to UK wide super savings (at a one off charge of £10), you'd be mad not to want to join, seeing as we're all poor students.

Stop Bitch*ng! I have never, and I mean NEVER, been denied student discount on account of not having an NUS card. (I should point out here, to save myself from the anally retentive that I dont shop on Amazon). So amazon aside, all UK retailers/cinemas/pubs/clubs etc. will give you student discount if you simply tell them the reason that we dont have an NUS card (I won't go into reasons here, if you read this mini-site, they become apparent pretty quickly!).

We're supposed to be highly literate and clever students here - strap a pair on and get out the chat!

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